Posts by The BigYin

Fujitsu pumps £280M into UK arm to keep lights on after Horizon scandal

Re: No justice yet

This is the UK, no execs will ever be punished. A few middle managers might be thrown to the wolves, but that is about all.

The UK is very weak at going after the rich and powerful.

Not before justice is served to the execs of Post Office and Fujitsu UK.

Memebers of the C-suite in both companies need to be in jail, and for quite some considerable time.

Is GitHub a social network that endangers children? Australia wants to know

There's more than just GitHub

If GitHub is a social media site, then so is GitLab.

Hell, so is email!

Latest Windows 11 insider builds hide secret File Explorer dark mode

Side-by-side and Tabbed views

Oh wow, dark mode. Be still my beating heart.

Give be a side-by-side view (a la Midnight Commnader). Yes I know I can have two windows and use a layout, but that takes a lot longer than pressing "F3" (Dolphin keybinding).

Also give me a tabs. Yes, I can have multiple windows but that's a bloody pain in the arse compare to "Ctrl-T" (Dolphin again).

Some of us use or PCs to get things done, instead of asking an AI and passing off its hallucinated drek, and don't need molly-coddled.

BASIC FEATURES!

But who am I kidding, Windows doesn't even offer "Always on top" as a standard feature. Yes, I know about PowerToys. That they exist proves my point, people want these basic features.

Millions of age checks performed as UK Online Safey Act gets rolling

Muppet

> The same Peter Kyle who posted "If you want to overturn the Online Safety Act you are on the side of predators. It is as simple as that."

Aye Peter, because all the groomers and CSAM spreader are hot on age verification.

Absolute roaster!

Please, FOSS world, we need something like ChromeOS

Well, on you go then

The author seems to have a clear vision and scope in mind, the author should set about doing it.

F/OSS isn't there to do their bidding, but it will enable them to get things done.

If they don't have the technical skills required, they can collect a team of like minded individuals or even pay for people's time.

The result?

There were N Linux distros vying for attention, now there is N+1 Linux distrosvying for attention; and didn't they start out by saying there are too many Linux distros?

Windows 10's demise nears, but Linux is forever

Re: Yada Yada Yada

There's a bunch fo very good F/OSS mapping tools, I use QMapShack to edit/create GPX tracks and create custom maps.

For offline tracking when out and about, use OSMAnd. It works really well.

GadgetBrigde has compatibility for some GPS wearables. Usual rules apply, choose the software first and then pick the hardware that supports it.

Microsoft veteran ditches Team Tabs, blaming storage trauma of yesteryear

It's not about the storage, it's about readability

If you use spaces, you impose you code preferences on to others.

If you use tabs, you leave it up to IDE setting on how code should be displayed and thus everyone can have their preference.

If you are using a space sensitive language (or config format), then quite frankly you deserve everthing you get!

Desktop hypervisors are not dead: Oracle preps major VirtualBox update

I use a UK keyboard without issue. Little more than a case of setting the correct keymap in the guest OS.

VirtualBox with Hyper-V, please

I just wish Oracle and Microsoft would get into a room and make whatever changes are needed to allow VirtualBox and Hyper-V to co-exist.

Yes, in theory it works but in practice you get the turtle in the bottom right, and performance tanks. It can be resolved by disabling WSL2 and ensuring Hyper-V is fully disabled, but that is a bloody PITA.

VMWare seems to be able to make things work, not sure why Oracle/Microsoft can't do the same for VirtualBox. I would use VMWare, but I have found their networking and USB stacks to be utter garbage.

Microsoft Edge still forcing itself on users in Europe

It shouldn't be different.

The desktop environment is providing the framework, the applications should use it. The only exception I can think of is if you are using an application that is geared towards a different desktop environment, then (and only then) you might need to update the option in a couple of places.

This is just MS ramming their shonky crap down people's throats, as ever. I hope the EU boots right in the bank balance for it. Not like the UK will do anything.

IT needs more brains, so why is it being such a zombie about getting them?

LOL! After a recent sideways move/promotion I got asked what motivates me. My answer was "Laziness". That took the new boss by surprise. :-D

Pet hate: Exception messages like "Could not connect".

Could not connect to what? What was the error code?

Yes, I know perfectly well that vomiting a stack on to the screen is a security risk and even if you don't want to reveal (potentially internal) URLs to the user - PUT THEM IN THE DAMNED LOGS!

Charging your iPhone literally costs Apple millions as Batterygate saga slams shut

Although I agree, popping up a "Your battery is an ex-battery. Do you with to optimise or play Random Reboot Roulette?" notification would have gone some way to resolving matters.

Or they can make batteries replacable, but there still needs to be a prompt to the user to go and get that done.

Chinese media teases imminent exposé of seismic US spying scheme

Re: Whatever China

> They love their "Whataboutisims" but ignore what they do themselves.

Who, China or the USA?

The correct answer is "Yes".

Australian court orders Meta subsidiaries to pay $14 million over data use

Until the fines are a percetange of global, gross income they will never be enough.

Central UK govt awards £12M+ contract to leave Google Workspace for Microsoft 365

Re: Pulic money : public code

Came in here to say the exact same thing.

Utter madness that our tax money is being shuffled into the pockets of private companies like this when we could "own" the code.

Ubuntu 23.04 Lunar Lobster scuttles into public view

Re: Snap Is Crap

If you use a home location other than "/home/<name>", Snap breaks.

UK tax authority nudges net 'influencers': You may owe us for those OnlyFans feet pics

Go for the small fry

I wish HMRC were so keen to make the major corporates pay their fair share and stamp down hard on the tax evasion schemes like exhorbitatn "licensing fees" etc.

Microsoft patent eyes ads in streaming online games

A patent for this crap?

How the ever loving hell does crap like this possibly merit a patent? The ability to rotoscope (which is all this really is) is freakin' old. Older than me, and that is saying something!

Also, just no. NO! I buy the game, I own the copy, I don't ever want to see any ad for anything. End of discussion. (Mandatory on-line can also bite me.)

I will just stick to indy or sendhand off-line games, with maybe some Sauerbraten for online japes.

GitHub's Copilot flies into its first open source copyright lawsuit

Re: "Open source is a cancer"

No one.

Ballmer did say that the Linux was a cancer, though.

The training data contained GPL'd code.

The GPL (with few exceptions) applies to derived works.

Copilot can this emt GPL'd code.

Thus any product that used Copilot generated code may be subject to the GPL.

This is not a problem with the GPL, it's a fine license and ensures software freedom.

The problem is bullies like MS not respecting others' licenses.

UK awards Fujitsu $60m contract amid calls to suspend it from government work

The exec of Fujitsu and the PO should be in jail

Per title.

Really not much more to say on the matter.

If you didn't store valuable data, ransomware would become impotent

An old idea

I am pretty sure this very idea did the rounds ~15+ years ago.

It jives well with us nerds/geeks who want to control our data (becasue we understand the risks) and know how to. Not so well with Granda Miggins who just wants their cat pictures.

LibreOffice 7.2 brings improved but still imperfect Microsoft Office compatibility

Re: Does "compatibility" mean having the same issues?

That'd be amusing option to see.

* Import Word doument with:

1. Perfect fidelity

2. Recreated compatibility problems for a target version

British owners of .eu domains given an extra three months to find a European address

The UK is in Europe!

> "The British owners of 74,000 suspended .eu domain names have been given an additional three months to change their registration details to an address in Europe before they are permanently taken away."

This kind of language really grinds my gears. The UK is IN Europe and will continue to be in Europe until plate tectonic decree otherwise. What the author should have said was "... to an adress in the EU...".

This continualy "othering" of Europe and not viewing ourselves as the Europeans we are is IMHO one of the many things that resulted in Brexit.

Please be more careful, language matters.

GitHub restores DMCA-hit youtube-dl code repo after source patched to counter RIAA's takedown demand

Re: Youtube

They run their own repo now, just add it to F-Droid.

You can't spell 'electronics' without 'elect': The time for online democracy has come

Re: Advantages of hand-marked, paper ballots

> Basically, enter your selections on a computer.

Failed at the first hurdle. The rest is meaningless.

Re: Advantages of hand-marked, paper ballots

The meatsacks are easier to "hack" one-on-one perhaps but it does not scale well at all. However if you hack the hard/software once, you can hack them all. This scales in a way that meatsack fiddling does not.

Missing ballots, again, does not scale well. It can become obvious that things are missing and recounts/revotes taken. If you hack the hard/software no vote is missing, you simply alter it to what you want. This is much harder to spot.

That said, mail voting is the most likely form of meat-space voting to be fiddled with; often in places of multiple occupancy where one person can collect the ballots and vote on them all. This happens in some communities more than others.

Not an argument for e-voting

This is not an argument for e-voting, but one for reforming the USAian electoral system.

E-voting is simply too wide-open for abuse to be used for anything serious. Electing the captain of your golf club? Fine. The ruler of your nation? No way!

Using IT to help with the count is fine, but at the end of the day it needs to be meat-sacks and paper counts as corrupting that simply doesn't scale well and by the time you have a conspiracy large enough to affect a country, said conspiracy will collapse under its own weight.

The author handwaves away far too many problems. For example: How does F/OSS voting software help when the hardware is crippled by an exploit in IME? How do you verify that the F/OSS software you think is running, is actually running in an unaltered state and hasn't been rootkited into oblivion? You don't, not with any certainty anyway, not unless to are prepared to disassemble the machine, check every chip, scan the drives and check every byte and only then begin the count. Rinse and repeat for every single link in the chain. That doesn't sound like an improvement to me.

E-voting is a horrifically bad idea and should never be used as part of a serious democratic process. I really wish people would stop pushing it.

Relying on plain-text email is a 'barrier to entry' for kernel development, says Linux Foundation board member

Plain text is king

Well...OK...UTF-8 encoded Plain Text is king but whatever.

If your mail client HTML-ises a plain text email then, I this is just my opinion, it the email client that is to blame. End of.

Email should be plain text. HTML leads to too many quirks, rending problems, bugs, attack vectors and bloats email size.

Outside of the vomit that is Outlook, every email client I have used will respond in plain text to a plain text email, allow you to specify plain text, RTF, HTML or whatever in a few clicks and has easily accessible defaults in the setting. If this is hard then either you are a bit thick or (more likely) your email client is utter garbage.

Ever felt down after staring at your phone late in bed? It's not just you – mice do too

Re: Don't your phones have a blue light filter...

Mine kicks in when I tell it to, I can also drop the screen brightness.

I wish it went a smidge redder and a fair bit darker.

But it's better than nothing.

What do you call megabucks Microsoft? No really, it's not a joke. El Reg needs you

Ideas

* Macroshaft

* ₼ikro$oƒt

* The Redmond Devourer

* The Great Pretender

* The Nutella Factory

Does a .com suffix make a trademark? The US Supreme Court will decide as Booking marks its legal spot

Re: Trademarking an address

Top-tip: Never use 123reg. Go with Mythicbeasts or someone else credible, you do get what you pay for.

All your name are belong to me

As the owner of "noun.com", "pronoun.com", "verb.com", "adverb.com" and "adjective.com"; imma gonna come for all your cyber baubles!

Who's still using Webex? Not even Cisco: Judge orders IT giant to use rival Zoom for virtual patent trial

No install required

Whilst Zoom is a stinking turd, it can be cajoled into running in the Chrome. Cancel the auto-download, click on the download link, cancel that, now click on the new "Open in browser" link.

Or kick Zoom into touch and go with something much more open like Jitsi Meet.

RetroPie 4.6 brings forth an answer to 'What do I do with this Pi 4 I bought last year?'

Re: Shove that in your Pi-Hole...

I just user the ad-block service on OpenWRT.

Florida man might just stick it to HP for injecting sneaky DRM update into his printers that rejected non-HP ink

Re: And yet...

That Brother 8690LCDW is currently just shy of £500.

Far too pricey to risk being locked into expensive refills.

Already in final beta? That's Madagascar: Ubuntu 20.04 'Focal Fossa' gets updated desktop, ZFS support

Kubuntu?

Nah, wait a bit longer for the new Neon to drop and get all the new hotness with the latest KDE.

We're number two! Microsoft's Edge browser slips past Firefox in latest set of NetMarketShare figures

That's depressing

Is Chromium the new IE6?

At least the core is open source I guess.

World Wide Web's Sir Tim swells his let's-remake-the-internet startup with Bruce Schneier, fellow tech experts

Or just load the AdBlock addon into OpenWRT.

Internet Society CEO: Most people don't care about the .org sell-off – and nothing short of a court order will stop it

Most people don't care about a great many things. I, for example, don't care about the habitat of the Lesser Crested Grebe Warbler because I don't know I should care, but that doesn't mean protecting it isn't a goo thing. (I made that species up just for illustrative purposes).

Most people don't know how the Internet works,most people don't know they should care about the ".org" privatisation but that doesn't mean we shouldn't protect it.

This whole line of argument is some weight variant of argumentum ad populum.

RuneScape bloke was wrongly sacked after reading veep's salary details on office printer

Re: Personal Usage

Personal use of office equipment is almost always permitted "within reason". No one is going to bat an eye-lid if you print of a sheet or two for personal need (or use the work PC for a personal email). When it starts to disrupt the day job or incur significant costs, then you'll get a warning.

Hackers could turn your smart meter into a bomb and blow your family to smithereens – new claim

Physical security?

> The physical security of the meter is strong

What? It's on the outside of the house in a non-locking enclosure. There is NO physical security!

Google's .bro file format changed to .br after gender bother

Re: Seriously?

Isn't that the Twitter archival format?

And yet...

...we already have .ms, .she, .las, .grl, .sis, dol, .gal and even .vag

Where is the outrage over those? Oh yeah, they're just file extensions and no sane person gives a flying shit.

UH OH: Windows 10 will share your Wi-Fi key with your friends' friends

Re: F**king Madness

"I enter the password for the guest network for them."

I have a QR code with the details on it as well. Android users can just zap the QR code, iPhone users and type it in.

Lonely Pirate cheers on Big Copyright-bashing EU commissars

Re: It's pretty obvious

"Sky (still) get your money, you get (I assume) a better mix of programming for you."

Company sells package A in country 1 for X. Company also sells package A in country 2 for Y. X is 2Y. The company wants to sell as many at price X as possible because there is more profit.

Geo-locks are one tool that lets them do this. So the company will get upset if that is removed. Under TTIP they would probably sue the countries involved (and win).

It seems that "free trade" only applies to the seller, not the purchaser.

Re: It's pretty obvious

"There is also the competition aspect, why should you pay more when the content is available elsewhere for cheaper."

That's true of everything, but the companies want one-way free trade. i.e. they can sell everywhere, but you can only buy where the company decides.

Which isn't free trade at all.

It's pretty obvious

The harder you make it for people to use legal services, the more they look elsewhere.

Here is my money. I *want* to give you my money. Why won't you let me?